Why Isn't Open Source A Gateway For Coders Of Color?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/12/05/248791579/why-isnt-open-source-a-gateway-for-coders-of-color?sc=tw&cc=share

by peter-fogg • 13 years ago

29 77 13 years ago

npr.org

evadne• 13 years ago

Relying on open source development to gain recognition and fame is like depending on unpaid internship to get your feet in the door.

MaulingMonkey3• 13 years ago

It's a spectrum. Possible difference include copyright ownership of the work, applicability of the work directly to the business's goals, the reusability of the work as part of your portfolio...

...but if you're building something on a company's API to specifically get hired by them, it's effectively an unpaid internship, regardless of the license and the copyright.

lmartel• 13 years ago

Some good points made, but the part about many people in open source getting paid to do it is a stretch. Lots of google insiders have talked about the fall of 20% time (and most 20% time projects weren't open source), and few-to-no other companies offer this as a perk.

I'm all for increasing opportunities for underrepresented groups, but don't discount all the passionate, unpaid work people provide to the open source community!

jbrechtel• 13 years ago

It doesn't have to be explicit "use X% of your time to contribute to open source" to count as getting paid to do it.

When using OSS libraries on commercial products I've found the need to fix bugs or other problems and have sent pull requests with those changes afterwards. Granted not all clients approve this, but I wouldn't describe it as "few-to-no other companies" that allow it.

Theodores• 13 years ago

...or coders with two X chromosomes?

Allegedly 1.5% of open source software contributors are female. So you are more likely to win the lottery than finding yourself working with a black woman on an open source project.

srl• 13 years ago

I would expect that the two aren't independent -- the proportion of black women to black men could well be very much higher than the proportion of white women to white men. The same qualities and situation that help a black man become a programmer despite the various forms of systemic bias would also be useful to a woman.

mariusz795• 13 years ago

Lack of time? Come on that's just a really lame excuse. It's hard but even with full school, full time work, part time startup, and two kids it's not that hard to find two three hours a week to do some os dev.

icebraining• 13 years ago

Sure, but many of us are lazy and don't have the motivation to work so much. The thing is, if you have two populations with roughly the same amount of lazy people, but one has on average more free time, it's more likely that it'll produce an higher volume of contributions to FOSS projects.

mariusz795• 13 years ago

Yes, I totally agree, but I'm sure you can agree that it's still just a matter of deciding what you want to do with your free time. If you decide that the free time you have is better spend watching Braking Bad or playing EVE, you should not use "lack of time" excuse for any other activity. It's all about priorities.

MaulingMonkey3• 13 years ago

The fact that you can still squeeze in two-three hours a week to do some os dev is a really lame excuse for working that hard; there is more to life than work.

And there are those with more time obligations than what you've listed on top of struggling to make ends meet. Not everyone, granted -- and for some, lack of time will indeed be a lame excuse -- but it sounds like you're generalizing to everyone.

mariusz795• 13 years ago

Lack of time is a lame excuse. Always. I often use it, but I'm not lying to myself, blaming stuff on something else. It's just an excuse. There is 24 hours in a day. If you sleep for 8 hours like I do, you still have time for 8 hours of work, and spend 3 hours with your kids, you still have 5 hours to do something productive. Even if you waste 3 hours on stuff like eating, commuting or watching television you still have 2 hours to do something productive.. And we should not forget about the weekend and holidays where you have eight hours that are usually spend working, freed up. And working hard? I'm lazy and I hate working hard, that's why I'm a soft dev. :)

NAFV_P4• 13 years ago

When it comes to teaching yourself to code, two to three hours per week is lame, what you learnt in one week is likely to have been forgotten by the next.

mariusz795• 13 years ago

So yes, let's not do anything and blame stuff on some lame stuff like lack of time.

dasil0033• 13 years ago

I agree there are systemic issues of racism keeping blacks and latinos away from open source, but those issues have nothing to do with open-source per se. The free time issue is a big one. Access to computers at home in early childhood is probably even bigger. Consider Bill Gates getting computer access as a 13 year old in 1968, this was an incredible leg up, something which gradually broadened but when I was a kid in the 80s I was still relatively privileged to have access. These days the financial barriers are extremely low as you can get started programming on the cheapest netbook, and free wi-fi abounds.

These days I think getting into open source is great advice for minorities, and I think they will find it to be as close a meritocracy and "color-blind" environment as they will find in America today. That said, it is an inherently harsh environment to learn where there is a pretty low tolerance for beginners, and it could be quite discouraging for someone just getting their feet wet in programming. Also, if it's pitched heavily as a gateway to a lucrative career by parents and authorities a lot of people are going to be pushed into it who might not have the intrinsic interest to succeed in the pedantic world of telling a computer exactly what to do.

That said, one has to imagine that the number of blacks and latinos with a very strong potential to be good programmers is probably severely under-represented in industry as well as open source simply due to lack of early opportunity and privilege.

goggles993• 13 years ago

I agree there are systemic issues of racism keeping blacks and latinos away from open source, but those issues have nothing to do with open-source per se. The free time issue is a big one. Access to computers at home in early childhood is probably even bigger.

You have been watching too much MSNBC. Young Blacks and Latinos watch 3-4 hours of television per day and play 2+ hours of video games. There goes your free time belief.

Access to computers and internet? Poor blacks compared to poor whites have the same resources to computers yet the poor whites become coders in the same percentages as the general population.

You are 0 for 2.

true_religion• 13 years ago

Well his arguments are based on past experience, not current day trends.

dasil0033• 13 years ago

I don't watch TV and I said a lot more than two things you narrowly dismissed with a few convenient and cherry-picked "facts" Mr. Holier-than-thou.

If you don't think poor people (not ones still living under their parents roofs) have less time than middle class people then you have never been poor.

primelens• 13 years ago

Sources please.

lttlrck• 13 years ago

So what is your take on it?

michalu2• 13 years ago

I am white, but my father watched TV most of his time and never worked on anything and growing up in such environment so did I. If you grow up in an short-term gratification environment it's much harder to stay with problems long enough to solve them and thus you end up giving up on many hobbies sooner. My father was probably just lazy or resigned due to constant worrying about economic situation but I can imagine that as an immigrant parent with lower job opportunities, language skills and no existing parents to support you, you're less likely to end up with a job you love and you worry about other things than hobbies in spare time. This affects the environment your kids grow up. I am not from US but I can imagine the parents of majority of those kids were in much different situation to others, because (I live abroad) I know that when I was in my home country I would aways had a place to go (my parents) and a support from them and thus more time to look out for a job I like and more support with the kids from them so I could raise kids in much different environment.

knowtheory• 13 years ago

I think they will find it to be as close a meritocracy and "color-blind" environment as they will find in America today

In this thread: Lies open source developers tell themselves.

It's a sad joke Rubyconf attendees yearly confuse @bryanl and @daksis with each other, but it's happened at every Rubyconf i've been too (which is granted 3 but it's there).

Open Source is a community, and communities are about who you know, and how you interact with them. Open Source communities do nothing to fix or address the structural or cultural elements of racism.

Success in open source is like success in anything else. It's about building something that other people care about, and promoting yourself and your work to others (or having someone else promote it for you). That last component is entirely socio-cultural. There is no meritocratic component to it.

It's again worth noting that the modern etymology of the term 'meritocracy' was satire against the concept we identify it with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology

Being good at what you do and working hard is necessary but not sufficient to being recognized and successful.

dasil0033• 13 years ago

You and goggles99 are coming at me from opposite ends of the racist ideologue spectrum, whereas my view is more nuanced.

Did I saw open-source was a panacea? No, I did not. I just said it was better than most other power structures in America. Why? Because code talks. Just because most engineers dislike political correctness and aren't doing anything to right structural inequities permeating our society doesn't mean they are racist. If they are passively supporting racist structures just by being white and operating within them, okay, that's a minor strike against them and feel free to slather on the white guilt, but it pales in comparison to the typical old boys club operations of most power structures in America.

Obviously open source has cliques and insiders as well, but that's based on a history of actual work and participation. I think the idea that a black man coming and jumping into open source is going to be at a disadvantage because of his race is not credible.

gaius3• 13 years ago

Who and who, and how is it illustrative? For the non-rubyists.

smoyer2• 13 years ago

" The free time issue is a big one."

I have four kids, a career in software (after almost 20 years that included hardware design), a couple of outside activities but the reality is that software is (and has been) my hobby. And I pursue my hobby instead of watching television, I read software books more frequently than fiction.

You could probably say my life isn't very balanced, but my kids and wife haven't complained that I don't make time for them. It's a matter of sleeping less and not filling my time with other hobbies. I'd hate to call this racism (not that racism doesn't exist) when it might just be cultural differences?

I realize that there are definite economic barriers to even having time for a hobby, and that put having a suitable computer out-of-reach, so I think I'd rather see this particular issue framed as one of SES. Racism, as well as a variety of other factors can definitely affect SES ... and there's often continuity within a family.

So what can we do? Since it's the season of giving, I'll start with an offer. If you believe you're being kept out of the software field, you're truly passionate about software as a career (not just because the pay tends to be good) and if you're in the Central Pennsylvania area, please contact me via the e-mail in my profile. I'll do what I can to get you connected into a community and set up with a used computer that should get you started.

goggles993• 13 years ago

One of the spaces you might think would be a gateway for developers of color to enter the industry is through open source software development. You don't have to know somebody or have a degree in software engineering or get hired to participate in an open-source project. You can jump right in and start writing some code.

This sounds like the author is resigned to the fact that colored people don't go to college. Is that the premise of this article? What about the tiny percentage of colored college students why have any interest in software development?

But in Haibel's experience, the open-source world is even whiter and more male than the world of proprietary software. "It's very clear that the open source community is whiter than the software community as a whole," she says.

Wait, this seems to imply that the fact that there aren't many women or colored coders is because the white men in charge refuse to hire them on this basis. This is in stark contrast to reality where the fact that is not mentioned here is that there is little or no interest to code from these groups.

There are larger societal factors that contribute to the whiteness of the tech world, more broadly. Blacks and Latinos are more likely to attend under-resourced schools, they're underrepresented in math and science fields at every level of higher education and increasingly so the higher they go, and are less likely than whites to

This is such garbage. Blacks and Latinos in the same schools and in the same socioeconomic status as their White, Asian and Indian counter parts become coders at the same rates. Why do journalists always try to make everything about race unfairness?

There is no story here. Blacks and Hispanics aren't coders very often because they don't have ambition to do that. Wither it be cultural or genetic is not exactly known but it is not because they are disadvantaged. what is all this crap about them contributing to open source?

Would we ever see an article about how Indians and Persians are overrepresented in gas station and liquor store ownership (a very lucrative career) and how white people should do x to catch up? White people don't aspire to do that, end of (non) story.

steveklabnik9• 13 years ago

colored people

Just for your own sake, in case you're not a native speaker: you shouldn't ever, ever say this. The words you use send social signals to others, and 'colored people' sounds really, really, really racist.

This is distinct from 'person of color,' which is not. Use it instead.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color

gaius3• 13 years ago

Coloured is a normal saying in South Africa and isn't an absurd politically correct euphemism for black. Before accusing others of racism, check your cultural imperialism.

mhurron• 13 years ago

They're both ways of segregating the world in to people who are white and people who aren't. Saying one is appropriate and one isn't is just as stupid as saying blacks saying nigger is ok but it's horrible if anyone else says it.

poppysan• 13 years ago

Except for the "colored people" comment I wholly agree with your take. As a black guy, there is little real understanding of the lack of barriers to becoming a programmer. This alone holds a lot of minorities back, without adding the myriad of other non tech related barriers. Stories such as this one seeks to help, but dont unfortunatly.

goggles993• 13 years ago

Thanks for the reply. I meant no offense. The article uses the words people of color several times. I fail to see how using people of color and colored people are different. Sorry if this hurt your feelings.

noja• 13 years ago

In case anyone is wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color

theorique8• 13 years ago

Not to be confused with code of color

http://www.colorforth.com/

knackernews• 13 years ago

I disagree with racism being an issue keeping blacks & latinos from open source / free software development and I don't understand why people keep talking about barriers to software development. These days computers are ubiquitous (in the developed world at least). You can be poor but still afford a computer, and all the knowledge and tools you need are available for free. The only potential barriers I see is having the skills required to make useful contributions to an established project (something at the level of the existing developers) and free time.

About myself: I didn't go to a great school; Didn't have friends or classmates who were interested in computers or programming; Didn't have a role model to inspire or guide me; Never went to a workshop or joined a user group; Never attended a computer science class until I was in college.

I got fascinated by computers by reading about them in a newspaper when I was a kid, and had to go on a hunger strike every night until my father caved in and bought one for the house. By the time I was 15 I worked together with 4 guys to build a popular website and we developed a file editor together. We collaborated over IRC and what's interesting is that we knew nothing about each other except our nicknames and where we lived (This was before social networks became popular). Nothing else mattered except our mutual interest and skill.

Oh, and I'm not white.

sergiotapia4• 13 years ago

I don't understand why people keep talking about barriers to software development.

Because 'white guilt', and people need _something_ to post about in their tumblr blogs. ;)

I'd like to see some specific cases of racism in open source. I've been working professionally for 7 years, and I haven't seen a single case of racism anywhere in open source. I just can't imagine it; who would put themselves out there like that doing something terrible, and what community would allow that?

steveklabnik9• 13 years ago

Earlier in the thread knowtheory describes a specific situation that happens over and over and over again.

salemh• 13 years ago

You can jump right in and start writing some code.

Will it be deployed? I don't imagine the pay-off to be immediate, or self-correcting (teaching/mentoring). I can't imagine how open source is somehow a teaching/development code base for beginners.

etanazir• 13 years ago

Ever make a pull request and get some feedback on why not? Ever publish a package and respond to issues?

knowitall6• 13 years ago

I've read somewhere that most open source contributors started their own projects, rather than joining existing ones.

NAFV_P4• 13 years ago

Makes sense, reading someone else's code is generally harder than reading your own.

paul_f• 13 years ago

How do you know what color other people on an open source project are? Is this a feature of GIT that I am not familiar with?

knowitall6• 13 years ago

"more than 8 in 10 open source developers are white"

According to Wikipedia 72% of the population of the USA are white, so maybe 8 in 10 is not really that much of an indication of discrimination or disadvantage. (72% boils down to "more than 7 in 10").

theorique8• 13 years ago

While OSS is not 'just' a US thing, it is probably heavily weighted toward US participation. Although India and China have huge populations of technically educated people, the language barrier is probably a factor there.

I would imagine that the region with next highest contribution is Europe, which comprehensive English teaching. (also: mostly white)

theorique8• 13 years ago

It's not clear to me that there's overt racism in any FOSS communities (e.g. racial slurs on email lists, active rejection of visible minorities at conferences). Perhaps I miss that kind of thing because I'm white, but I've certainly never met any overt bigots. Or maybe the bigots save that kind of thing for one-on-one so as to have plausible deniability? (For what it's worth, no one confided in me, as a white man, assuming that I might share their racist attitudes.)

So if not overt, the racism must be passive and environmental. But the relative abundance of Asian (Indo/Pakistani and/or Oriental) members in IT and FOSS software suggest that there's not an obvious or passive "White Power" conspiracy going on there.

Economic issues, education, and free time make some sense as barriers, and these are disproportionately shared among the different races (in the USA at least).

steveklabnik9• 13 years ago

If you type slurs into GitHub code search, you'll get over 10,000 results for many of them. Some of these are bad word filters, of course, but many are not.

theorique8• 13 years ago

This is definitely a concern. What does it tell us, I wonder?

I'm certainly not saying that there are no individual bigots in the OSS world. With thousands (millions?) of people you'll get all points of view, beneficial and toxic.

A simple 'grep' of GitHub reveals a lot of crap, but are these influential projects? Do these projects have multiple committers who have signed off with pride that "my project contains 'n-----' in the code comments"? Do these projects have lots of users?

It would be interesting to plot the occurrence of racial slurs against the number of participants in a project (controlling for offensive term filters or corpuses of 'real' language). My hunch is that the vast majority of these terms occur in one-time undergraduate projects or forgotten hobbyist repos.

pmorici• 13 years ago

Are any of them open source projects that anyone has ever heard of? I don't see any.

Edit: why did you delete the links to the searches? It looked like literally 99% bad word lists, and a couple of random repos that probably only the comiter cared about. One of them was a dump of metadata from pirated files off The Pirate Bay.

Irishsteve• 13 years ago

Yoza! Just did a search for some of the popular slurs.

ceras2• 13 years ago

But the relative abundance of Asian (Indo/Pakistani and/or Oriental) members in IT and FOSS software suggest that there's not an obvious or passive "White Power" conspiracy going on there.

This is a common argument but I think it's kind of irrelevant. It's not untrue, but it doesn't suggest that there is no bias against other groups (women, blacks, hispanics, etc.). I think it's fair to say Americans by and large are extremely comfortable around Asian people and not so comfortable around blacks or Mexicans. Programmers are no different.

theorique8• 13 years ago

So you're saying there is a passive or subtle bias against blacks or Hispanics in the OSS world in a way that is not also applied to Asian members of that community?

jere• 13 years ago

I love all the commenters in uproar: this can't be racism!!! Notice that the word "racism" was used in the article 0 times.

[Open source software] contribution takes time; I don't think anyone would contest that. Getting familiar with a project, finding out where you can fit into it, reading and responding to issues, testing and submitting patches, writing documentation. All of that requires a good deal of time.
Marginalized people in tech — women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and others — have less free time for a few major reasons: dependent care, domestic work and errands, and pay inequity.

knowitall6• 13 years ago

"marginalized" implies discrimination

V-2• 13 years ago

"Marginalized people in tech — women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and others — have less free time for a few major reasons: dependent care, domestic work and errands, and pay inequity."

Why do LGTBQ people spend more time on domestic work and errands?

Why Isn't Open Source A Gateway For Coders Of Color?

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